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Volume One

Abstract: Feminism often incorporates conceptions of the human person into historical, biological, and sociological studies. Outside the work of Prudence Allen, there is a significant lack in the 20th and 21st century accounts of the gender that is explicitly metaphysical, rigorous, and so comprehensive as to bring into relation the physical, social, historical, cultural, volitional, and rational aspects of a person’s identity. Much confusion results. This paper explores the metaphysical approach of Prudence Allen and argues that it could help to organize at least some of the work being done in contemporary feminism.

Abstract:In his Regensburg Address, Pope Benedict XVI states, “A reason which is deaf to the divine . . . is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures” (para. 58). Unfortunately, as Pope Benedict notes, contemporary Western philosophy is in fact unprepared for the task of dialogue among cultures precisely because it cultivates this “deafness” to the divine: “In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid” (ibid.). How should a Christian philosopher understand the relation of faith and reason? In the present essay, I present and defend Edith Stein’s account of the proper relation of philosophy and theology, such that philosophy retains its character as a science apart from theology and yet does not stunt its investigations through artificial and self-imposed limits. I will compare Stein’s account with passages from Fides et Ratio and address several objections, most pointedly the claim that the Christian philosopher, insofar as she is identifiably Christian in the content of her claims, ceases to be a philosopher.